Monday, 16 January 2012

While waiting for the price of gold to fall I was listening on-and-off to Andrew Marr on Start the Week.

I missed the start so here's how the BBC described it: "Detlev Schlichter dismisses the practice of printing more money in times of recession, arguing that in the next decade our reliance on paper money will collapse, and he proposes a return to hard commodities, like gold. The historian Philip Coggan pits creditors against debtors, tax payers against public sector workers, and believes it's time for a new monetary system to emerge. The Labour peer, Lord Glasman thinks we need to change the relationship between parliament and the market. And Angela Knight sticks up for the bankers, insisting they hold the key to the crisis, so deserve both a bonus and a bit of respect."

Hopefully no one will read this far - but also to help pass the time I've been reading Karl Marx's Capital. His description of how commodities work is sort of sinking in. A lot of it is about gold. I'm not sure it's a great help in terms of investment advice or how widely accepted his description of commodities exchange process would be any more, but its the most fundamental description of where value comes from I've seen. But then I haven't looked very hard.